


Trepidation of the Spheres

by diopan



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-23
Updated: 2015-02-23
Packaged: 2018-03-13 20:45:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3395774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diopan/pseuds/diopan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sasaki feels he should be in search of something he can’t know. The feeling is usually left behind in a foggy daze as the day progresses, buried under other, more pressing, more material matters. Sometimes it’s days before the feeling is back, before they are back to him in dreams.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trepidation of the Spheres

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hikachu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hikachu/gifts).



i can only hate her so much, loathe the hands that push her into the ground, and her too, loathe her much more because she’s being struck, because she is i and is being struck

_The girl has long hair, her eyes framed by glasses. She sits alone and looks to no one. The place is familiar, feels like a childhood home; the architecture strange, limitless, outside but inside: a self-contained world that envelops everything. Doors leading to other doors, to other doors. He knows his way around, and he has to guess every time. She sits for a while alone, she seems like she belongs like this, alone, before the boy shows up. He only watches the two of them, but they seem to know he watches. They glance his way once or twice, then return to themselves, the books open on top of the table—there is a table but he only ever notices it after the books, as if it was there for them and not the other way around. There’s a hallway behind one of the doors he opens. It’s dark. He can’t make much out, but scraps of metal hang from the ceiling, as if the building was desintegrating. He can hear water running, but he can also hear the voices of the girl and the boy as they speak to each other. He doesn’t understand what they’re saying but he knows they speak of the books. And he knows they speak each other’s names. And he knows they’re reaching out for each other, risking to be devoured, at a distance, slowly encroaching distances that’ll eat all of them up, himself included. Why is he included? The water running is blood. It reeks. But he can’t see its color._

Last night was the same. The two people in the dream—he knows their names but tries not to think them awake—were there again. They’re there often. By morning after such nights, Sasaki feels he should be in search of something he can’t know. The feeling is usually left behind in a foggy daze as the day progresses, buried under other, more pressing, more material matters. Sometimes it’s days before the feeling is back, before they are back to him in dreams. Not very long, though, not many days. And sometimes, practically never, the feeling doesn’t fade until night, until he dreams of nothing, wakes up with nothing. Last night was the same dream and it’s almost noon and he’s still sure he should search for something. It’s lasted longer this time. He wanders aimlessly into the CCG’s library. What he searches for isn’t there, of course, but he can trick his intuition enough into distracting itself and leaving the urge behind slowly, like coming out of a scalding hot bath, sluggish and relaxed, cleaner, soaked in fogs, limbs heavy with drowsiness. He imagines she feels strangely the same, cloaked, chained.

 

* * *

 

 

_The girl has long hair and eyes framed by glasses. This time she sits alone and looks to him before looking to no one. It’s not his childhood home but something like it, where she is seated in, at a table. He sees the table this time. This time the architecture is strange and limitless, and everywhere he looks are walls but it’s everywhere that exists at all. A hallway with a river of blood running peacefully, a stream. Her eyes focus on him once more as she sits for a while alone, looking like she belongs. Then the boy shows up. He wears a smile. The boy smiles at the girl but also at him, he knows the boy smiles at him, even if he only watches the two of them, because they seem to know he watches. They seem to know him, to call to him when they glance his way once or twice. He wants to know them too, he thinks he can, he thinks he should, he thinks he does. Then he returns to themselves, to the books open on top of the table—he saw it first this time. He looks back at the hallway with the stream of blood and the metal beams ripped like flesh, pulled back and teethed like a tin can opened with no care, just once, before returning to them, the voices of the girl and the boy as they speak to each other. This one, they say, and he knows they mean a story in one of the books but he knows not which story, which book. this one is the best, i’m sure, i’m sure, she thinks she’ll help the beggar out of their connection, she wants to feel better about herself, lifting the woman out of poverty and misery and the streets, but the beggar is just there to eat her up entirely, her life, her husband, her riches, pierce into her chest and take everything from her, leave her beaten on the street, a beggar herself now, on the bridge, cold, they are the same so maybe she’d wished this on herself, strangely masochistic, that’s why she hated her so much, but only so much, mostly, she loved her, mostly. They both are in agreement, they are so similar, sharing their thoughts, their ideas, it feels as if they share a voice, a brain, some kind of organ or another, that he shares it too, because he understands them, he understands the story, he speaks their names clearly, loudly, says them over and over, Rize, Ken, reaches out for them like they reach for each other, risking to be devoured, at a distance, walls slowly encroaching in on themselves until the three of them are crushed under their weight, the weight of sharp, ripped metal. He hears their bones crushing, feels his own splintering, splitting his skin open, melting into their skins, and he keeps whispering their names, they call out to him and it’s like they should all be included, all of them. Or her and him. The water running, dripping, is their blood. It reeks. He knows it’s red._

Last night was the same, again. Those two—he knows their names, thinks them over and over, mulling over the sounds—were there, and he was there as well, same as always. And they were limitless like him and the architecture and their bodies. This time it’s afternoon before he can be rid of the fogs and the daze and he’s inside a bookstore. Mutsuki, he’s with him, glances around. Once in a while, Mutsuki’s fingers trace the back of a book, and it seems like he’s found something, but, the same as Sasaki, he doesn’t, really, wish for anything in there. But Sasaki, at least, wishes he did wish for something. Maybe then the feeling would go away. He skims over a couple of books that call out to him. Mystery or horror novels, with gaudy covers that might not be connected to what the novels are about: skulls, dogs baring their teeth, ancient ruins. He’s reaching out for a book called ‘Dear Kafka’ (he wonders what it means) when Mutsuki tells him it’s time to go. The fog clears and he’s ready to leave, his limbs heavy with cleanness.

 

* * *

 

 

 _Rize’s long hair is held back by a ribbon he’ll remove when he runs his finger through her hair. She sits alone, of course, looks to him before smiling, before biting the back of her finger. It’s not a home, the place where she is, but feels homely. She is seated with crossed legs. He thinks it’s meaningful that he can see her legs under the table before he sees the books. The architecture is strange and limitless, and everywhere he looks are walls with Rize’s eyes on them, looking at him. He watches her smile, blood trickles down her chin and disappears. She uncrosses then crosses her legs again, looking like she belongs. Ken shows up when her legs are crossed once more. They smile at each other, Ken and Rize, then at him. Ken doesn’t sit, he extends his hand to run it through Rize’s hair, and he can feel it, his hands are Ken’s hands, and he undoes the ribbon holding her hair back. He doesn’t just watch, he runs his fingers through her hair, he runs her fingers through Ken’s hair, too. They don’t need to call to him this time. He knows them now. They sit at the table and it’s colder and less dark and the river, the stream, is almost inaudible. The metal beams dangling atop the entire floor, the whole architecture of this world of theirs, are out of sight, out of focus, they’re no longer the centre of the picture and they might as well be gone. Rize’s the one that wants to discuss that particular book. Ken’s only read it once, some years ago, but remembers it leaving some kind of impression, especially this one story. It’s the same story Rize wanted to recommend he read. He suspects she’s satisfied that Ken has already read it, because she didn’t plan on allowing him to._  
_\- Going by the title, I expected the horror to be more graphic, more violent. Bestial — Ken laughs — but it’s all subdued. I liked that._  
_Rize stares at him with a smirk._  
_\- Yes, you’d like that. But I like it too. It’s mysterious, the atmosphere is eerie, of unease. Nothing is as expected, everything is veiled, everyone is being tricked. Even the stories that seem innocent are macabre, in their own way: subdued, but violent that way too. Made of the same matter, born one out of the other. Like the women in the story. One eats the other whole.  
_ _They both are in agreement. They are so similar, sharing thoughts, ideas, like the women in the story, Rize and Ken, reaching out for each other. It’s not a risk, to do it, it’s a decision, to be devoured whole, to be crushed under the weight of all that’s in them, outside them, ripped from their very core by a kagune, by claws, by their own hands (Rize lapping up blood; Ken tasting flesh), by the metal falling into itself, desintegrating. He can hear her bones crushing, he can hear his skin splitting open, he can feel her in his organs, in his flesh, their kagune inside him, ripping him open at the back. The stream of blood pours from one of his sides, red._

Last night again, again: Rize and Ken both in his dream, both him, both them, he mumbles their names, his names, himself. A litany to keep focus as he runs after a ghoul, trying to keep his eyes on Mutsuki and Shirazu, try to pinpoint where Urie is, so he keeps mumbling—Rize, Ken. It’s night and their names are clear on his tongue, his names are clear on his mind, like the fog of wanting to search has become new clarity, a lighthouse: the mist is the universe now. Limitless, a self-contained world that envelops everything. His own world. Rize’s. And Ken’s. He runs through a dark hallway. The floor is wet, he can hear it in the way his boots hit the pavement, splashing liquid to the sides; some drops reach his bare hands. He’s murmuring the names because Mutsuki and Shirazu and Urie are nowhere to be found, but he keeps running. This time the stream is just water but it shouldn’t be long. It shouldn’t be long until it’s red.

He sees Rize. Says her name, says his own, the real one, before he can hear Akira’s voice some distance behind him talk of some high ranking ghoul—he doesn’t know much about that one, he pays no attention. He says Rize’s name and extends his hand to her at the same time he can feel the bullet pierce through his skin, his organ, feel the pull of the kagune at his back, straining and ripping, like it’s coming out of the muscles coiled around his stomach, his stomach itself, trying to protect his body—Rize’s body, Ken Kaneki’s body, his body—by ripping it up from the inside, can’t regenerate fast enough. (He thinks he remembers hearing or reading about a black goat, but not a goat, a woman, ripping off the entrails of a man, he thinks he tries to remember before the face of Rize gets too close). For only a second, less than a second, he knows he’ll forget Rize, and Ken, everything about himself, he knows tonight he’ll dream of nothing, wake to nothing, and before long he’ll have the dreams again and he won’t know who those people are, who he is, what they speak of, and he knows he’ll wake longing to find something in libraries and book stores, somewhere, until the longing fades, over and over, until he understands the dreams a little better, learns their names, never saying them, until he’s able to see her again, like this. And for a second, less than a second, he feels tired. He’s tired of this chase. He closes his eyes. He dreams of nothing.


End file.
